San Mateo, CA, December 16, 2024 – The WITH Foundation is providing more than $3.4M across seven different organizations in strategic partnerships. These are the second round of larger investments into some of the foundation’s existing partners and grantees. You can learn more about the first round of strategic partnerships in this press release. All strategic partnerships fund efforts that support healthcare equity for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities in the United States.
“WITH Foundation is honored to enhance our investment in these organizations, each of which fosters transformative change in healthcare for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. These partnerships reflect our belief that advancing healthcare equity requires centering lived experience, valuing the leadership of those most impacted, and building systems that prioritize inclusion and dignity for all,” said Ryan Easterly, Executive Director of the WITH Foundation.
Strategic Partnerships
The following seven organizations will receive funding as a Strategic Partner:
Institute for Exceptional Care, Washington, DC
The Institute for Exceptional Care’s project, Transforming Care for People with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, centers the perspectives of adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities in co-designing healthcare solutions. They will achieve this through developing clinician training curricula to support diverse patients. IEC will also review existing resources, identify gaps, recommend solutions, and create clinician training pathways. This will inform future courses, addressing gaps and accelerating the integration of these pathways into clinical curricula by partnering with educational societies.
National Alliance to Advance Adolescent Health, Washington, DC
The National Alliance to Advance Adolescent Health’s Strategic Partnerships for Inclusive Health Transition will aim to support young adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities and other disabilities in accessing continuous healthcare and insurance coverage during the transition to adulthood. The organization will achieve this by building partnerships, developing innovative program and policy options, and ensuring the sustainability of Got Transition, the national resource center on health care transition.
University of the Pacific, Arthur A. Dugoni School of Dentistry, San Francisco, CA
The University of the Pacific Arthur A. Dugoni School of Dentistry will create and sustain a Special Care and Hospital Dentistry Internship Program. The program will provide training, covering the scope of general dentistry and hospital-based dentistry for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. As this population of patients is growing and aging, the goal of the program is to improve health-practitioner competency and increase the oral health workforce prepared to care for this population and train the next generation of providers in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Vanderbilt Unversity Medical Center, Nashville, TN
The Boosting the Use of the IDD Toolkit to Enhance Health Outcomes for Adults with IDD project, in partnership with the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center, will build on WITH’s previous support in developing the IDD Toolkit and investigate the most effective ways to disseminate the IDD Toolkit (i.e., tools to enhance primary care for adults with IDD) to physicians, adults with IDD, and their families. The project will use an implementation science approach to investigate how physicians and families would like to access these tools and then test out these approaches to see which are successful.
Arc of the United States, Washington, DC
To address the significant healthcare challenges for individuals with IDD, along with this population’s increased risk of sexual violence, The Arc of the United States will collaborate with the World Institute on Disability (WID) and local chapters to enhance healthcare provider training, A Transformative Framework for Change in Healthcare Education. The training will emphasize cultural humility, creating person-centered care plans, reducing implicit biases, and elevating leadership of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Additionally, training will leverage existing Talk About Sexual Violence (TASV) materials to empower providers to engage in crucial conversations while equipping individuals with IDD with the tools necessary for self-protection and seeking help.
Wiki Education, Chico, CA
Wiki Education will expand its existing efforts to make healthcare information on intellectual and developmental disabilities more accurate, up-to-date, and inclusive of people with lived experience by Promoting Access and Justice to Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Healthcare Information on Wikipedia. The organization will lead virtual Wiki Scientists courses to improve healthcare and disability-related articles on Wikipedia, as well as increase faculty recruitment to run courses in disability studies with a Wikipedia assignment in higher education classrooms.
National Down Syndrome Society, Washington, DC
National Down Syndrome Society will form CANDID: Coalition for Actionable Novel Data Insights and Decisions, a coalition composed of cross-disability self-advocates, allies, nonprofit organizations, and academic institutions, which will be driven and led by Dr. Priya Chandan. CANDID will place self-advocates at the forefront of all three project phases– design, implementation, and dissemination– and be intentional about incorporating universal design principles.
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WITH Foundation (WITH) promotes comprehensive healthcare for adults with developmental disabilities in the United States that is designed to address their unique and fundamental needs.
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Press Contact: Sofia Webster
Director of Communications, WITH
communications@withfoundation.org